


Better Than Fairy Godparents

by minishadowsoul



Series: Family Means Your Problems Are Our Problems [5]
Category: Descendants (2015), The Isle of the Lost - Melissa de la Cruz
Genre: Ben has learned better than to insist he is fine and needs no help, Ben is now included, F/M, Gen, The Isle Four treat each other like the family they always wanted, one day Ben will help them dial back their concern levels, that day is not today....or this month, the Isle Four meddle like someone's fairy godparents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 18:00:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4634868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minishadowsoul/pseuds/minishadowsoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben is a king now. He is used to a life filled with people constantly looking out for him. One would think that would mean he'd be used to his four, newest friends taking care of him, too. They would be wrong. These four take Looking Out For One Another to an entirely new level. </p>
<p>Or the one in which whenever Ben has a problem, he blinks and finds that problem has been solved/is being solved before he can even complain about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better Than Fairy Godparents

**Author's Note:**

> Still unbeta'd.
> 
> One day I will get writer's block and take more than three days to finish a short story. Apparently, that day is not today.
> 
> To everyone that has commented on my stories, thank you very, very much. To everyone who has left kudos, thank you very, very much. To everyone who may not have left kudos or a comment but read my story anyway, thank you very, very much.
> 
> Basically thanks all around. You're all wonderful people

Ben wasn’t even certain how it happened.

Okay that was a lie. He knew exactly how it had happened. He hadn’t paid enough attention and had tripped over something in his room. He hadn’t broken anything (not himself nor any of his possessions), but he’d banged his left knee hard enough for bruises to form what almost instantly. That was okay. He could deal with that. It was his ankle that was giving him the most problems. It throbbed and might have been a tad bit swollen.

If Coach saw him limping, he’d make him sit on the bench during practice for the rest of the week, and they had a game on Friday. He’d already been excused from practice today because he had to deal with kingdom stuff. They had a shorter practice on Wednesday, and by Thursday, Ben should be fine. Or fine enough to justify hiding his injury from anyone who might tell Coach. He just had to make it through today and part of tomorrow without someone noticing he’d been clumsy enough to hurt his leg. Then he’d be golden. It would be fine.

Miraculously, no one seemed to notice his efforts to ignore the pain in his leg and walk without a limp. Really, it didn’t hurt as bad as it had the time he’d fallen off of a bookshelf as a child and managed to break his leg. Compared to that, this was nothing, but it was uncomfortable all the same. And sort of itchy. He suspected he might have scratches on his leg he hadn’t noticed when he’d pulled on his pants earlier. 

He made it through a two entire classes without someone even hinting that his efforts to pretend nothing at all was wrong were in vain.

Then on his way to the third class of the day, Carlos was suddenly there, exchanging the books in Ben’s arms for a donut and a thermos of what smelled like tea. Jay appeared soon after and wrapped an arm around Ben’s shoulders, jostling him in a way that miraculously didn’t make his leg hurt much more than it already did and still somehow managing to accept most of Ben’s weight and keep it off of his injured leg. 

“There you are! I wanted to ask you something about the game on Friday,” Jay said then started in on the conversation. Ben was so focused on Jay that he didn’t realize they’d steered him into an unused classroom until Carlos shut the door behind them.

“I’m fine,” Ben insisted, but he sat down when all Jay did was cross his arms and raise a judgmental eyebrow at him. 

Carlos snickered and carefully raised Ben’s pant leg. He ignored all of Ben’s protests until Ben decided it was just easier to go along with them and batted Carlos’ hands away. Ben may or may not have complained under his breath the entire time, but honestly. He could raise his own pantleg, okay? He was not four years old. Although, Carlos’ gaze made him feel like he was ten years old and had once again hidden skinned knees from his mother.

Jay dug around in his backpack until he found his first aid kit, opened it, and looked expectantly at Carlos. “What do I need?” he asked him. 

“Disinfectant and something to wrap his knee and ankle with,” Carlos answered after a gentle inspection of Ben’s leg. He then stood up and crossed his arms, giving Ben a very concerned look. “No one shoved you, right?”

Jay stilled, and while he didn’t turn to look at Ben, it was obvious he was staring at him out of the corner of his eye. Ben bit his lower lip to avoid letting out an overdramatic sigh.

“I tripped over something in my room, but I’m fine. It’s just a little bruise and maybe a sprain,” Ben insisted. He didn’t bother standing up. The combined weight of Jay and Carlos’ concerned frowns made his shoulders slump. “Okay. Fine.” He made a vague gesture toward his leg. 

Carlos and Jay took that as permission to get to work. Carlos was the one who very carefully disinfected the scratches on Ben’s knee, apologizing every few seconds for the pain, while Jay wrapped up Ben’s ankle. As soon as Carlos was done bandaging Ben’s knee, Jay wrapped that, too, and Ben was suddenly very, very glad he’d worn loose pants that day. Things were awkward enough, and he realized neither Carlos nor Jay would have had any problems wrestling him out of his pants in order to fix his leg.

Carlos snickered at the look on Ben’s face and gave him a wicked grin. “Be glad we were the first ones to get to you and not Mal and Evie,” he said, probably just to see Ben’s eyes widen and his face go even redder. 

Jay paused his efforts to pack up the first aid kit long enough to glance at Ben. At least he had the decency to try and turn his laughter into a series of coughs. 

“You could have just taken me to the infirmary,” Ben groaned and hid his face in his hands. Mal was going to laugh so much when she heard about this. 

“Why would we do that?” Jay asked, clearly baffled.

“Yeah, if you’d wanted people to know, you wouldn’t have put so much effort into hiding it,” Carlos added. When Ben raised his head to look at them, he saw Carlos looked just as confused as Jay. They both stared at Ben for a moment before Jay reached out to awkwardly pat Ben’s shoulder.

“Look,” Jay said. “Wait for me between classes, and I can help you walk without putting too much weight on your leg. Might end up injuring it even more.”

Carlos nodded. “The rest of us can carry your stuff. Always travel in a group when injured. It’s just good sense.” He, too, patted Ben’s shoulder then gave him a friendly smile. “We’ve got your back, your front, and your sides, bro. We won’t even tell Mal your room is so messy, you tripped over something and injured yourself.”

“She’s going to find out anyway, isn’t she?” Ben asked as Carlos and Jay helped him out of the classroom. Neither one of them answered and seemed to be doing their very best to pretend they hadn’t heard the question.

Yeah, Mal was never going to let him live this down.

 

~*~

Ben didn’t even remember falling asleep. No, strike that. He vaguely remembered straining to keep his eyes open in the library as he listened to…someone drone on and on about laws passed hundreds of years ago and how they’d differed between the kingdoms. He remembered shutting his eyes and wondering if he should douse some water on his face. Maybe that would help him stay awake for this very important study session/council advisory meeting thing.

Then….

He opened his eyes, and he was in his room. He was, in fact, tucked in his bed wearing the pajamas he always packed but always forgot to actually put on before bed. Usually he just tossed whatever he’d been wearing that day on the floor and burrowed into the blankets, placed a pillow over his head, and hoped he’d remembered to set his alarm.

He sat up slowly and glanced warily around the room. He’d woken up to the scent of coffee filling the room, which wasn’t all that unusual these days. What was unusual was the actual coffee maker sitting next to his alarm clock. It appeared to have turned on a few minutes ago because the pot wasn’t even half full. Someone had left a notecard propped against it that informed him supplies were on his table.

He was curious enough to get up to inspect said supplies. The coffee supplies had been left in a little basket. The multitude of coffee creamers looked as if they had been pilfered from the cafeteria along with dozens of little packets of sugar, five coffee stirrers, a small stack of coffee filters, and most of a container of Ben’s favorite ground coffee beans. There were two bottles of water beside the basket as well as a thermos, presumably for the coffee. 

A plate of blueberry muffins had been left next to the basket. When Ben poked one, he found it was still warm and wasn’t sure if magic was involved or just very sneaky friends. Either way, it didn’t matter, so he grabbed one and took a bite before he looked at the last pile of random things someone had left on the table. This was just a pile of the things Ben had had with him in the library, and he would have ignored it had he not noticed the notecard with two smiley faces resting on top of everything.

He knew exactly who had a hand in this particular pile of objects because one smiley had a crown on top of its head and the other was actually a puppy’s head with little bones dancing around it.

He finished off the muffin before he went through the pile of notebooks, textbooks, official kingdom stuff that was technically for his eyes only, and an extra folder with Evie and Carlos’ signature logos drawn on them by Mal. That was…not entirely unexpected. He wasn’t at all surprised they’d gone through his things. He had no idea if any of them knew the phrase, “Better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” but they all operated under the guideline. 

When he saw what was in the folder, he had to sit down and spend more time than he really should have laughing. Because what?

Evie and Carlos had read everything he’d left on the table and, between the two of them, had left bullet pointed summaries of the contents and placed those summaries in the folder. He had a feeling they’d ended up quizzing the poor advisor he’d met in the library, too. 

Mal had left notes, too, but hers were in the corner of the page and usually just said things like, “I didn’t let them read the whole textbook so they just hit the stuff we thought your class is currently going over,” or “Got halfway through then realized document was technically classified. Skimmed through the rest and left notes anyway. Please make sure no one arrests them.”

The last note was really a notecard that looked like it had hastily been slipped behind everything else by someone trying to be sneaky. “If you can’t maintain a proper sleep schedule, we will get you a babysitter. You didn’t wake up once when I carried you from the library to your room and put you in bedclothes. That is a bad sign, man,” the note said in Jay’s hasty scrawl. 

Ben imagined the four of them had already hashed out a tentative schedule and divided shifts so someone was always keeping an eye on him and could be on hand to suggest/order him to eat and sleep. It was far more endearing than it was frustrating until he realized one of them would eventually realize they could contact one or both of his parents to get their suggestions on a proper schedule.

He grabbed his phone and started setting alarms to remind him when it was time to rest. The last thing he needed was the Isle Four and his mother teaming up to worry and hover and make him feel a hundred times more guilty than he should because he “wasn’t taking proper care of himself.”

 

 

~*~

It was subtle, at first. 

Ben would wake up to find his phone and laptop plugged in to their chargers and couldn’t remember plugging them in the night before. He misplaced his favorite pen one day and woke up to find it on top of the text books he’d left on his desk. His toothpaste was almost gone when he left his room, but when he returned it had been replaced with an new tube. The same thing would happen to his shampoo or soap bottles. 

It wasn’t entirely unusual. He was a prince (okay he was a king now, but he had been a prince). Princes had servants that took care of the little details like that. At first he suspected Lumiere had one of the younger servants sneaking in and out of the school to keep Ben supplied in whatever he needed so all he had to focus on was the more important things like class and making sure the kingdom ran smoothly. 

Then something weird had happened to the coffee maker that kept showing up in his room no matter how many times he tried to give it back to Mal and the rest of them. He’d been too tired to deal with it and had just unplugged it and gone to the cafeteria for his caffeine fix. Honestly, he’d forgotten all about it being broken until he was halfway through his first cup the next morning.

He blinked at the thermos in his hands, then glanced over at the coffee maker. The coffee maker that had been broken the morning before. The one he’d forgotten all about. The machine that now seemed to be working perfectly, had been plugged back in, and had been reset to make coffee at its usual time every morning. 

He stared at it for a moment then narrowed his eyes at his phone (plugged in) then his laptop (still on like he’d left it last night, but also plugged in and the top had been closed). The clothes he’d left on the floor were….in the hamper that wasn’t nearly as full as it should have been. When he looked in the bathroom, everything was in order and just as he’d left it. Except the towel he’d left on the floor was hanging up, there was a new roll of toilet paper sitting on the tank (probably because the roll on the wall was nearly gone), and his electric razor was already plugged in. 

When he opened the drawer of his nightstand and found a few packages of snack food that he knew for a fact he hadn’t placed in there (nor would any of his family’s servants think to do such a thing), he decided that was the last straw. He wasn’t angry. He was confused and maybe a little bit irritated because how did they keep sneaking into his room and no one noticed, including him?

~*~

Mal pretended not to know what he was talking about when he brought it up. Her eyes darted to the side, and her teeth caught her lower lip like they always did when she wasn’t sure about something. Sometimes, she would edge away from him, and Ben knew he either had to change the subject or risk her making up an excuse to run away so she could regroup. Thankfully, she leaned against him this time and mumbled something unintelligible then stole his thermos so she both had something in her hands and something to use as a stalling tactic.

Still, this meant Ben wouldn’t have to wait for answers as long as he was patient and didn’t press too hard. 

“You’ve never told us we had to stay out of your room,” she pointed out after she’d maneuvered herself so her back was to Ben’s chest. This way she didn’t have to look him in the eye and would get more hugs out of the conversation than normal. 

“It did not occur to me that I needed to do that. Most people are pretty obvious about intruding in on another person’s space,” Ben pointed out. He held out for about a second before he wrapped his arms around her. “I’m not mad. I just want to make sure you guys know you don’t have to do things like this. I am already your friend. No bribery or cajoling needed.”

“It’s not bribery. You’re **our** friend. So Jay leaves snacks in your room in case you get hungry, and he finds the stuff you’ve lost because reverse thievery is apparently the best way to give someone a gift. Evie remembers your favorite brands of shampoo, toothpaste, toilet paper, and other stuff and gets you more when you run out because none of us want you to run out of stuff. Running out of stuff sucks. You shouldn’t not have things just because you forgot to replace them. She and Carlos clean up your room a little because apparently you’re kind of hopeless at it. Carlos plugs in your electronics before they run out of battery and repairs your stuff because…he likes doing those sort of things. Why pay someone to fix stuff or bother someone else when Carlos is perfectly capable of…..” Mal trailed off and took a sip of Ben’s coffee.

Ben waited a few minutes. Mal had a habit of falling into stubborn silence whenever she realized she’d said more than she’d meant to. Ben still wasn’t quite sure why, but he knew it was at least partially because she was embarrassed. When Mal remained silent after several minutes, Ben tugged them both to a nearby bench. Mal sat in his lap without even a token gesture of protest, probably because it helped her avoid Ben’s gaze.

“Okay,” Ben said slowly. “I notice you didn’t say a word about what you do to help.” He couldn’t see Mal’s face properly, but he knew she was scrunching up her nose and possibly baring her teeth a bit at the implication.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she insisted then poked him in the arm when she felt him laugh. “Fine. I….might have found a spell to keep intruders out of your room. Only people who are welcome can come in. And your room will always stay an optimal temperature and it muffles noises from outside so those stupid birds don’t keep waking you up and….there….may or may not be a sort of warning bell that will let one of us know if you’re injured or sick…” These last words were said in a mumble that Ben could only just make out. 

“That is….adorably sweet,” Ben decided and this time laughed out loud when Mal lightly kicked his leg with her foot. “It is. I think the entire lot of you are the kindest, most thoughtful friends I’ve ever had. I’m pretty sure no one else I know would even think to do all of that. Except maybe my mom.”

He definitely didn’t need to look to know Mal had covered her face with her hands to avoid anyone seeing her blush. Not that there was anyone around to see. Ben had chosen his confrontation spot very carefully. After a few moments, she leaned her head back so she could awkwardly stare up at Ben. She studied him for a moment, gaze suspicious and more than a bit wary. 

“You’re not mad?” she finally asked.

“Mad that you’re all good people trying to take care of me? Oh, yes, I am super upset. I don’t know how I’ll ever get over the betrayal,” Ben informed her and managed to keep a mostly deadpan tone. His lips kept trying to twitch into a smirk, and the smirk won out when Mal elbowed him and laughed.

“Shut up. You’ll ruin all our street cred, you know. Some people still find us terrifying,” Mal insisted between giggles. 

“Jay walked around campus all day yesterday with a princess braid full of flowers. Flynn and Ophelia took at least fifteen pictures and sent them to their mother. Jay posed for at least five of them,” Ben pointed out, chuckling at the memory. According to the rumor mill, Queen Rapunzel had loved the pictures and had asked the twins to ask Evie for instructions on the hairstyle. 

“Thieves are supposed to be incredibly charming,” was Mal’s response. Though she was almost snickering too much to manage talking. “It’s how they get away with things.”

“Oh, of course, everyone knows that,” Ben managed before they were both laughing too much to say anything else. 

~*~

Evie set a bottle of water on the table in front of Ben’s notebook and sat in the seat across from him. “Want some company?” she asked. “You look pretty frustrated.”

Ben groaned and placed his head on the table. “That obvious?” he grumbled. He heard Evie shift in her seat and assumed she shrugged.

“Little bit. Yeah. School or kingdom stuff?” she asked and opened a bag of…something. Ben didn’t want to lift his head up to find out.

“Both. This is way more work than I expected. I feel like there’s not enough time in the day for everything I want to do.” He sighed and lifted his head a bit so he could place his arms underneath his chin. 

Evie munched on the bag of dried apples she’d opened and looked thoughtful. “We could try to make a schedule? See what needs to be done and when. Then if it’s still too much you could……” She frowned and looked reluctant when she finally suggested, “Ask your parents for help of some sort? They’re…nice, supportive people. Right?”

Ben chuckled and nodded. “I just…asking for help would be admitting defeat, and….”

“Admitting defeat is unacceptable.” Evie nodded and looked determined. She pulled Ben’s notebook across the table so she could write in it and tapped the end of the pen she’d pulled out of her purse against her chin as she thought. “Okay. First times for sleeping and eating. Then a list of thing you need to do and a reminder to schedule in breaks that don’t involve just eating or sleeping. You’ll burn out otherwise….”

As Evie scribbled out a rough draft of a schedule that wouldn’t drive him utterly mad or straight into exhaustion, Ben wondered just how insulted Evie would be if he offered to pay her for her services. She was way better at this than half of his advisors were. 

Most likely, she would be so insulted she would never help him again….or would at least look extremely grumpy the next time she helped. That was fine. Ben would just have to pay someone to stock the vending machines with the snacks he knew the Isle Four liked and then feign ignorance whenever they called him on it. 

Come to think of it, his mother used very similar tactics when dealing with her father or her husband. They were just far less likely to notice and/or call her on it. That was good. It meant he could ask his mother for suggestions on how to pay someone back without them realizing it. Then, if he could convince her to implement the idea, the four of them wouldn’t complain about it. Much.

It was convenient of Evie to schedule weekly calls to his parents. Ben was really starting to understand why they meddled in each other’s lives so much. Pulling a plan together then pulling it off was really satisfying.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Something More Comfortable Than Formal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4649832) by [Mistwolf_Magic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mistwolf_Magic/pseuds/Mistwolf_Magic)




End file.
